Stages of Love
by Gender Outlaw
Summary: His heart beats slower the closer he gets.. HanabiNaruto drabbles. No order.
1. Halcyon

_"All I need is you."  
-- by Mike and The Mechanics _

* * *

Naruto's hands slid across her skin and down to her hips, resting in the soft grove there. Hanabi's flesh was shapely, a beautiful thing to hold. His fingers clenched around the fabric seperating them, bunching it in clusters, and pulled her body to his.

The scent of her hair was full in his mind, her face hidden somewhere in the warm softness of his shoulder. Their steps were feeble imitations of dancing; being too absorbed in the feel of another's warmth to care much more. Her arms felt comfortable holding his back, the muscles beneath his shirt an enchanting thing.

The scars on his face were thick and strong, and she thought they looked like something alive; so fierce and red. How could they not bleed..? She stared at his lips as they moved; the air he breathed was hot and heavy, nearly a thing she could touch.

Like a heavy heartbeat, the drums throbbed around them, hundreds of feet making the sound seem uneven and throaty. Voices swayed, melodies half-lost in the aftermath rumble of loudspeakers and summer love.

Her skin sweated with something foreign. His nails scratched the surface there as they burried their way underneath the fabric. The warmth was soothing and intoxicating. She nestled her cheek under his jaw, preoccupied with the act of breathing.

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**HALCYON**  
_tranquil and free from disturbance or care_

* * *

I'm sick of my author's notes, so I'll make this short. This story will have atleast, if not over, one hundred chapters, because the challenge has that many prompts. But I'm doing them without order. Because that's the way I think.

You will find little notes beneath the chapter summary connecting the chapters if any are connected. Think of it as a "Find Your Own Adventure" book.


	2. Mother

_"Romance serves a purpose. It's a meditative state."  
-- Joan Of Arcadia_

* * *

Hanabi looked like a shinobi.

And though the bruises were dispersed evenly, the maniac grin Naruto had become infected with just couldn't crack the whole of her face. As it was, only the edges of her eyes smiled. But still, the hard bones of her cheeks wouldn't extinguish the pride that shined there.

They were sitting side by side beneath an autumn tree, one deep in bloom as a lost saint encased in yearning for the sun. The two of them, they were close enough to be lovers. And the noon was falling like a song, the hymns they breathed in escaping their throats to be white air.

(Her nails had been cut short and filth caked under the cuticles; her palms were worn and callused.) It was as she getting her breath back that her head shot up, eyes narrowed in sudden thought.

Naruto watched her, staring at her mouth in the abrupt fasination only epiphanies can give. He started counting the cracks of the flesh there, feeling a dryness inside himself. The swallow of his throat made him hungry.

She didn't face him when she spoke. Her neck was erect as ever and her chin jutted out into the world. The words burned a quiet trail through the gums under her teeth. And, though she trembled, the motion was from her mind and not her body.

"What is a _'mother'_..?" She turned, and waited.

But he could do no more than blink; gazing solidly at her, and finding no words within him to describe a thing he never knew.

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**MOTHER **  
_the cause, source, or origin of something _

* * *

_Mother Arc: 16, 17, 18, 2, 7, 19._  
Basic ordering. Could be a little different.


	3. Gardening

_"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered."  
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson_

* * *

Hanabi was all black hair and clean lines that smoothed themselves like river stones. Her hands were as the feet of birds; a straight and narrow affair of sharp edges and thin bones that moved, weightless.

Those same wrists Hinata used to kiss the knuckles of when she thought Hanabi was sleeping, whispering words Hanabi never listened to in the moonlight.

Hanabi's garden was in bloom now - simply a sorry state of what was left over of her mother's. Not much grew there, but she still tried, digging into the earth and breathing lightly at the feet of falling soil.

The small plot of grass and flowers that belonged to Hinata would often spill over into Hanabi's tiny corner, and it pissed Hanabi off to no end. So she would then proceed to destroy whatever bright blossom of Hinata's had crept over the lines seperating them.

She used to burn the plants. Now she just attacks it with her chakra until they refuse to grow anymore.

Destorying, harming .. these are things she can do, things she knows easily. Things that she was taught from a very young age how to do.

_This is how you angle your head, Hanabi, so your opponent can not see your eyes. So he is afraid of you. People fear what they can not see. _Her hands gliding as she moved, a silent snake weaving through the petals of Hinata's garden.

_This is how you move, how you strike, how you use your Hyuuga hands to kill._

Hanabi would never let Naruto kiss her hands - they are her weapons, her freedom. They will make something of her. (The day will come when her hands meet Hinata's soft pair, and only one of the sisters will ever walk away from that fight, free. She has known this for a long time, prepared for it for even longer.)

But her garden suffered violently from her touch and it made her sad to know this, to know that she was scarring something of her mother's so badly. Ruining all she had left beyond memories ..

But Naruto offered to help her. He smiled at her when lazy afternoon light fell down in waves like sand, touching her as if she didn't kill what was small so effortlessly.

Naruto, whose plants sang in his small apartment where only the sun was the featured guest, calling again and again, happily. Visiting every day without fail, and even when the rain showed first, his eyes reflected the light until the sun again shone.

His fingers were all skin and muscles and knoby bones that moved with a clumsy grace. They curled softly around hers, like cloth against gold.

Maybe one day her garden would show the same kind of vibrant life he seemed to grow so easily in all things.

They kneeled together on carpet so thin, she could feel the stiff bones of the floor beneath. Her legs were cold, and her hands stiff from holding a watering can with childish smiling faces painted across it. But he was beside her, working with her as he taught her the right way to grow.

His voice was warm like waking from sleep as he moved her hands to show the best places to water, and she tried to keep the words in her memory, to hold against all things cold until the end of time.

But she would forget them. Later she will find herself kneeling again in her own small plot of land and see only weeds littering black dirt and what _will not grow._

She will look back on the images of vibrant life flourishing even under chipped paint, _try_ to remember his smiling voice, what he _said_, and only be able to call forth from this the way a single strand of hair fell across his eyes.

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**GARDENING**  
_the activity of growing._


	4. Light

_"Love's a bright light in the universe, and a bright light casts a big shadow."  
-- by Joan of Arcadia_

* * *

Hanabi has been flitting through her years in a half-daze, not even knowing she has done so, has lived so silent a life until there is suddenly noise in it. She has moved through her world with careful grace, like a ghost.

She is standing before what there is of her bedroom, all bare walls and unmarked surfaces. The bed is neatly tucked in with one sheet, perfect, and one pillow centered exactly on it.

Her eyes match the shadows and grays littered about the room, clinging to the spaces between with an uncanny resemblance to light. There is but one small case by her feet - only one container needed to hold all the belongings she would miss.

Her hand lingers near the handle, but she does not pick it up.

In the back of her mind (across the back of her shirt), is the sun. Burning bright as ever.

It burns her from the outside in.

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**LIGHT  
**_to illuminate; a state of awareness.  
to set on fire, to burn. _

* * *

_Home Arc: 4, 20_


	5. Star

_"What you see depends entirely upon where you look."  
-- by Unknown _

* * *

He clawed at the dirt caving in around him, the beat of his heart a living thing. Trying to breathe, he only swallowed worms, the slimy creatures clogging up his throat as much as all the dirt and dust.

The force of two support beams crossing over his spine weighed heavy on his back and his bones ached. The sudden impact had thrust him to the floor and splinters covered his chin like the pelt of a sharp animal.

His arms reached out, scratching, frantic. The tips of his fingernails meet air, then only rock as the motion caused it to tumbled down. The instinct within him to be free bleed his mind of rational thought and he fought his coccoon of dirt as only caged animals do.

If he listened, he would hear something.

He would hear Hanabi digging. Flashlight by her side.

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**STAR **  
_point of light in the night sky _

* * *

_Star Arc: 9, 5._


	6. Sanatorium

_"It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like."  
-- by Jackie Mason_

* * *

Hanabi, the firework. Who took pleasure screaming in the middle of the night like a hungry wolf, laughing under the pale white moon. Who took an ungrateful partner with her on an assasination mission. (Even though she could still smell the blood from her last assignment.)

_'The anger is easier, in small doses.'_ Naruto had whispered to her across the campfire, like a dirty secret. His smile was filth incarnate. Like a madman, his lips moved. This insanity was in his laughter. It was a part of him.

They were hiding before the target, unseen. Crouched shin to shin and so close the air she breathed out, he took in. His sweat was on her arm, and her elbow rested over his thighs. The warmth calmed her.

He turned his face (and buried his nose in her hair). His teeth lifted from his gums, high, in an expression of more than amusement, and giggled sharply.

She licked the blade of her kunari in boredom, delighting in the taste of metal. (As a small child she would always be found sucking on spoons. It drove her father mad.) The sensation on her mouth made her delirious with joy.

They were both a little mad, sometimes. But he was far better at it. She wouldn't be counting her shurkien beside him if he wasn't. Though, when his eyes slitted at her like that .. she couldn't always understand.

_"You know, they can't spell 'assassin' without 'sin',"_ he barely breathed. Then kissed her. Laughing the while.

_We are Sinners._

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**SANATORIUM**  
_from Latin; sanare "to cure," from sanus "healthy".  
medical facility for long-term illness_

* * *

_The Dirty Arc: 13, 6, 12, 10._  
Basically. This arc isn't finished.


	7. Stillborn

_"The world does not know what it needs.  
We offer it what we have."_

* * *

As he held Hanabi's stillborn, the hard shell of the tip of his finger traced a pattern across the infant's face. Naruto's thumb was wide enough to cover the whole of what was once a mouth, and he couldn't believe how anything could ever be that tiny.

The babe's face was blue, as the sky. Even bluer than the depths of Naruto's eyes and it made it hard for Hanabi's voice to move, the air she caught getting trapped somewhere between her lungs and throat.

She swallowed but the tightness remained.

Naruto rocked back and forth, still humming a slight tune and smiling as he whispered something she wasn't coherent enough to hear. Neither of them were, really. His song was catchy and it became something she would remember and think often of.

Hanabi was sitting upright in the bed, the back of her skull relaxed against the unsupportive surface of cold brick and frosted tiles. Her heart still raced, each beat pounding at her chest, despite the perfect stillness of - the aftermath of - the room.

And though the windows were closed with heavy latches, she could smell the sharp odor of salt that never seemed to leave Wave Country. Her eyes started to sting from it - unaccustomed to the levels - but they remained open, solidly staring at the unexpressive ceiling.

The child's hair was curly from birth and slightly wet. But Naruto kept humming as he wiped the stains away with something as ineffectual and lasting as his fingers.

Hanabi was so quiet, one would scarcely believe she was breathing.

And Naruto, knowing the true depths of humanity, gently wrapped the smallest corpse he had ever seen to spare her the task. He held the lost life, and breathed deep and loud for Hanabi, so she would remember how to, smiling at her across the barrier of a hospital bed when she couldn't do the same.

The silence was penetrating, etching between them a pattern over their souls that could never be removed, and no one knew how they would ever describe it to Kohona.

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**STILL·BORN **  
_dead at birth; ineffectual, useless from the start  
to allay or relieve_

* * *

_Mother Arc: 16, 17, 18, 2, 7, 19._


	8. Kiss

_"Kissing is like drinking salted water: you drink and your thirst increases."_  
_-- Chinese Proverb_

* * *

It happened when Naruto first discovered that Hanabi didn't wear underwear and the blushes spread across both of their faces, a disease of red heat that infected the blood beneath their skin, making Naruto's breath as he lifted her shirt come out steamy, a visible substance.

The fabric was heavier than it looked and his fingers trembled when only an inch of her waist was exposed, perfectly toned and flat. The ideal shinobi.

She laughed when he mentioned it and sucked in enough air to make her stomach puff out considerably. His eyes were entrapped by the buldge of flesh and he started to tear up while still holding her shirt.

She noticed when his shaking fingers brushed against her back accidently and grew quiet.

Hanabi's fingers closed over his shivering hands and stilled them. She tighted her wrists until the heat Naruto always had escaped even through her palms to travel up her spine.

She was smiling before he was, but that didn't matter too much when they finally kissed.

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**KISS**  
_a very light, almost imperceptible touch in passing  
small pieces of candy, sometimes individually wrapped_

* * *

Could be part of Mother Arc. Haven't decided.


	9. Onus

_"Loyalty binds me."  
-- by Richard III_

* * *

Hanabi hated her sister's cat; hated the way it's hair covered everything, got into her favorite socks, made her sneeze in the middle of the night.

And yet here she was, crouched halfway across town in an abandoned apartment complex with Naruto, the flickering of her fading flashlight casting eerie shadows against the walls and _searching for it_.

He had taken her quest more seriously than she thought he would, showing up at the door half-naked and leaving it so when she asked him to help.

She kicked aside another broken piece of furniture and covered her nose instinctively with her sleeve almost before the plumage of dust was kicked up. It surrounded her form completely for several minutes, until she finally kicked out into what she had previous thought was open air.

The girder crashed and the house came tumbling after. Hanabi kaiten'ed before she remembered where Naruto was searching.

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**ONUS  
**_the state of being accountable _

* * *

_Star Arc: 9, 5._


	10. Gun

_"She needs somebody and you need somebody __and it will work out beautifully." _  
_-- Steps in Time, by Ruth Wallace-Brodeur_

* * *

And Naruto was holding the revolver and pointing it upwards so he could stare down the barrell, smelling tentatively at the darkness inside as if it were a living soul. As if it might bleed, too.

The handle was deep and heavy - a sordid affair that reminded him too much of dead snakes. It weighed like cold stone, impressions tattooed by the same rush of water again and again, scarring..

Was there an intelligence in this piece of metal?

But what individual could sleep inside so cold a thing?

It was very heavy in the clasp of his fingers - a strange sort of pressure quite unlike the feel of any knife he'd ever held - and had an odd balance about it.

Was this the end he was supposed to hold to?

He raised it high, marveling at the lines, and let Hanabi see the darkness inside.

_"I will always love you."_

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**G U N  
**_device that forces something out under pressure. _

* * *

_The Dirty Arc: 13, 6, 12, 10._

I wonder if this might be part of the Mother Arc. That would be tauntingly cool.  
These _Dirty Arc_ dabbles could take place around the same time of Hanabi's stillbirth.


	11. Soldier

_"Love is a battlefield."  
- by Pat Benatar _

* * *

_"You have to fight for what you believe in,"_ Naruto told Hanabi, just the other day.

Hanabi fights, because she believes. In Kohona. In herself and her blood. In Naruto, and his optimism. In her teacher, her country, her Kage. In uncertain words and terms which need no definition to be real.

Hanabi, who is wearing the uniform of a Kumo nin and crouched at the border of Oto and it's neighboring countries. Watching as Sound's Outpost burns to the ground, the air thick and putrid with black, coiling fog.

Watching as Naruto, dressed the same, face covered just as her, leads the jounin too far away to be of any help to his team. Watches, as the last surviving chuunin this team was relieving runs for help.

The one man they did not kill in his sleep, who woke during the midst of their raid, sitting bolt upright and screaming, and shot their plan all to hell.

She fights with her best, as do the genins. But they do not carry her experience, nor her all-seeing eyes, white like silk. Hidden behind cloth bandages wrapped deceptively about her head, which she sees through as though it be no more than water.

And she wears them down, breaks them. Until, in desperation, toddling from weariness, looking like babes, they use the only attack left.

But they were _children_. Young, young ones too small to be there, wearing exploding tags and making of themselves living weapons.

Far more so than Haku was ever able to aspire to.

Hanabi had said to Naruto once; _"One need not be a soldier to fight."_

She still believes.

Even as the war begins, even as their stooge takes his role and runs to Orochimaru to report Cloud's attack. Chances are equal the man will and will not believe this deception. How well does he know his old teammate? To whom will he retaliate? Konoha or Kumo?

For, as Tsunade whispered just before sending them off. _"If there must be war, then I want it on my terms."_

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**SOLDIER**  
_one who works with dedication for a cause;  
an experienced fighter or military strategist;  
ant whose role is to defend the colony._


	12. Infiltrate

_"The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost."  
-- G.K. Chesterton_

* * *

It was a mission that sent them through steam and sweat and muddy muddy swamps because, really, why else would they have come?

There were seperated from the group in the outskirts of a little backwater town and Hanabi hadn't even given it a second thought until Naruto was gone (_gone_, gone gone) and she was standing alone, three-to-one.

She spun so fast she could have been dizzy, but that wasn't why her heart was beating. It ranted against her ribcage like a bird, and her knuckles flew - incoherent wings - to strike with her palms. By the time she was standing alone, again, in the clearing, she was already panicking.

It took an hour to find him. And when she did, he was kneeling over his own opponents body - one privledged in taunting the mind - with nails like molded stones, and one hand clenched over the bleeding hole in his leg. He snarled as he breathed, and it looked like his lungs were trouble.

Hanabi had come too late to be of any help.

What was said to him, to make his eyes stare like that? To make his face pinch in an expression she wouldn't name? And what, just _exactly_ what, was that strange piece of metal that lay smoldering on the ground beside Naruto with a sharp odor like brimstone?

The noise, as she approached, had sounded like a series of explosions were going off - one tag after another - but she saw no holes (none but for the inky one he clutched to).

Dazed, as if he were still half-asleep, with eyes hazy and half-lidded enough for it, Naruto picked up the metal with a slow reach that shedded the illusion of it's weight. It slid off the ground, and he turned it about in his hands several times, in an odd sort of fasination.

With a finality of certainty that Hanabi didn't like in the least from where she stood (why was she so afraid to reach out and touch him? He was only Naruto. He would _never_ hurt her. He couldn't.) Naruto's hand tightened over the unfamilar metal. Like a taut string being pulled, slowly, he lifted his arm and the strange device and pointed it _straight at _Hanabi.

(What was that thing? She had never seen that sort of weapon before. She thought idly, of asking TenTen. The girl seemed impossibly obsessed with weapons, almost mordily so. Hanabi had caught her sleeping, curled like small child, around a deadly sharp katana.)

The words escaped her mouth, unbidden. Like a plea, like a prayer.

_"I will always love you."_

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**INFILTRATE**  
_to get in position to do harm_

* * *

_The Dirty Arc: 13, 6, 12, 10._

You can supply the _"bang"_. I hear it.


	13. Ink

_Falling in love is so hard on the knees.  
__AEROSMITH_

* * *

Naruto is navigating the ANBU headquarters like a rat; having to test tunnel after tunnel after tunnel _just _to find the exit he needs. These corridors were built as if their sole purpose was to confuse and hide. (He thinks it is entirely too _too _easy to get lost, and wonders how anyone can find their way out for missions. Maybe this exact reason is why the ANBU are so reputed.)

Naruto finally locates his room (Containment Area: 3-R7 - He should really commit that to memory on the chance of having to come here again, Kami help him). The door is open and Hanabi is already inside of it, holding a stack of papers that looks suspiciously like something he should know about.

He wants to sit down, but the only useable chair is beside her (and with the shadows her face casts glancing up at his entry, he doesn't think that is a good idea), the mate to it half-way embedded in a nearby wall.

Chakra aside, he'd rather have a seat on the _floor_, thank you. (There's obviously an interesting story on the **how** of why that chair ended up a chakra-building exercise, but this is an interrogation room, so he doesn't pay that any heed.)

He decides that standing next to the table between them and leaning on it is a good enough solution, but there's a small cup of water that's _mocking _him, halfway full and so damned delicious looking that he nearly moans when he grabs it, only one gulp needed to clear the entire mess of his throat.

_"Gah!" _His neck tightens, and if Hanabi told him that there was a small serpent trying to strangle him Naruto would actually believe it. He grabs his neck, choking and his body wracked so violently with coughs that he has to grab the edge of the table beside him just to steady himself.

Hanabi scoffs at him and sits down in the chair (that isn't attached to the wall). She thinks little of this Uzumaki she's been assigned to. Who else but a fool would drown like that some mysterious glass laying out in wait?

She wants to ask if he's alright - good manners alone would call for it - but he doesn't look like he's _dying _or anything, and besides. This is the acclaimed _Uzumaki Naruto_ (as much as she'd rather not know). What water could bring him down?

His last cough was even more vocal than the one before it, and ends with a wonderful string of spit that he shoots into the cup, giving a happy little glare that almost seems triumphant when finished.

.. "What if that was posion?"

Hanabi is pretending to not be too interested when Naruto looks at her a little in shock, but she actually finds the potential trauma funny and a little smile slips out. This is, afterall, the ANBU headquarters. These guys are nuts.

Naruto is grinning at her when she looks (and he _wills_ his throat to stop that burning sensation which makes him want to scratch out his lungs - until it actually does so), so she turns back to her papers again - their assignment in loving detail (oh _joy_).

When the room becomes uncomfortable quiet - and with him, it seemed to be anything _but_ - is the moment she decides to see what he is doing, and finds Naruto leaning over the back of her, his hands resting on her shoulders as he stares down into her lap. (This is where she is holding their report, but she has the odd desire to blush even though he can't see down through the high neck of her shirt.)

"So .." He kneels down behind her - to better read, she'd guess - and crosses his arms over her shoulders, "What Mising-nin Cat do we have to capture today?" He smells lightly of paint and it is easier to ignore this (and in essence, to ignore the fact that he is _invading her personal space_) with her eyes firmly trained on the papers.

Naruto is looking her shoulder and his eyes begin to burn as they run over the rows of ink between Hanabi's hands. _Kanji_; the experimental letters of those who dip ink as a priest would dip souls, grinning fouly when the lines caress all edges of white and black. (He has a desire to hiss, but doesn't in the end.)

He closes his eyes and rests his chin on her neck, already dizzy from only a few words, and pretends to sleep.

He can't figure out yet whether or not she knows, when she turns her head to him and stares with those _seeing_ eyes (of which even quicksand can not catch all things the way she can).

He can't figure out yet, whether or not she knows. Her generation wasn't privileged to the classified information that his life is, but he wouldn't put it above her for her to possess this intell anyway. To know of that deep snarling beast lying beneath his gut; someone of whom he can no longer distinguish himself from. Of who he's forgotten a time when they were _not_.

Was it his body to begin with? Was it ever really his? The Fourth moved Naruto's soul in this way, and who is to say that there was a soul of Naruto's own in the start? Naruto doesn't think he will ever be sure.

After the mission ends, he will be at home and kneeling on the floor with a bottle of ink (that brings to mind spilled blood, even when it is contained so by glass) and parchment that lies too fresh and flat to calm his rapidly beating heart.

He will spread the paper between his knees and dip the brush, refusing to give fact to the physical pain reading Kanji brings. Every time his eyes tried to manage the words, they would start to blur and he'd hear screaming in his head. Sometimes the letters would morph into distinct shapes that always made his insides burn and his head hurt.

And it scared him shitless when he recognized the morphing kanji as seals he should have no business remembering. Seals that made him feel small (as if there was no end to the world), and he could distinctly smell fire thickly in memories that weren't his.

He will blow across the paper as the letters are drying and cool the flames of his past with warm human breath - a thing that feels like fire and yet is anything but.

When he tells her he can not read, Hanabi does not laugh, and that says all the things in the world to him.

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**INK  
**_a colored liquid or paste used for writing,  
__from _enkaiein_, "to burn in"._

* * *

Before **'Infiltrate'**. (Chapter 12)


	14. Joie de Vivre

_.. I think pleasure is like this,  
accomplished in a perfect silence  
undeceived by loneliness._

_- "Fireflies" by Karl Kirchwey_

* * *

Naruto does not speak to Hanabi as she rises from the tub, steam sliding off her shoulders in blue and gray. Pale white smoke circling in the mist of Hanabi's skin.

Standing in her bedroom, leaning against the doorway to her private bath.

In her _bedroom_, no less. The Hyuuga damned manor when he knew quite well what their eyes could do, and she could see Neji, even now, on the training grounds still. Still fighting, still trying.

Trying to change that which had already passed.

But she is so sure of what is lingering in the spaces between, what Naruto is _not_ saying, that she does not kick him out.

It is long past dusk, and all day he has been about town. Lingering at the ramen stand where Ayame still leans over the counter, hands cupped under her chin as she tilts her head and listens.

At the hospital, following Sakura while the girl laughs and shakes her head, saying _'No, Naruto. You're amazing but you're wrong, again.'_ And laughs that laugh which always brings a smile to Naruto's lips.

Her own sister even, who Hanabi saw hiding behind the streetlamps, fingers clenched in an effort not to tremble, as Hanabi browsed the vendors for quality steel.

Grasping the metals as she knew not what to hate.

Naruto's eyes, his smile, and even the carefree way he relaxes, in total comfort, tells her all she needs to know.

_"You are the only one",_ his eyes say.

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**HIATUS:**  
_the space between.  
_


	15. Travel

_"When you run, there's no direction."_

* * *

A life-size image of Hanabi's quiet face hangs from Naruto's wall. Her eyes stare out at a point infront of her, unseeing and fixed eternally into a space just before. A space that never changes. Her mouth is just barely open, almost smiling. The expression is one of half-amused waiting.

Waiting for him to wake up, for herself to awaken, to come back to life.

As if life was the joke..

The image rests in the center of his home, where he can see her always, from bedroom to kitchen. He walks past this picture with a sliding gait that lowers his shoulders and turns his head.

Hanabi becomes a spot of oil in the middle of his floor, a thing he avoids with careful steps and moving gazes. His eyes slip away from her image unconciously. The unresponsiveness of her face scares him. She does not move, does not speak.

She never ages.

This haunts Naruto's mind, wispy strands of ungrasped thoughts, and his heart beats slower the closer he gets to the glass.

Their eyes never meet.

In the blackness of sleep, behind the backs of closed eyes, she is still there. Haunting him..

Her open stare pounds against his back. And looking makes his heart ache so solidy that the pain travels parallel through him til his head _vibrates_ with equal intensity. A horrid chorus call from inside, paining his body like bleeding.

Naruto lies on his bed and faces the wall, tracing lines into the cool plaster with the edges of his palms.

Against the pale surface of unwashed white, even now he can see within what his eyes will not allow.

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**TRAVEL  
**_moving along a course, as in a groove._

_  
_

* * *

**Note:** Have you a picture of someone you loved but has gone ..?  
After awhile, even though you know it's there, you stop looking.

(I say this because I took down the portrait of my dead mother and put it in the attic, then felt bad about doing so. But her eyes. Her eyes would follow me.)


	16. Ghost

_"Ultimately, love is self-approval."  
-- by Sondra Ray_

* * *

She was of a ghost in the house, and haunted from room to room. Flittering between the edges of the shadows until she was but not there at all.

And this woman, this mother of Hanabi's, lingered on in the edges of Hanabi's memories. Daring almost, but not so allowed to step out through to the surface. To become real. She became a figment of Hanabi's imagination, thus. Hidden, but to the girl's dreams.

The world, the whole of it all, it started with a woman. Just this one woman. Or rather, the lack of.

Did she really forget, or did Hanabi simply cast off her aching memories to side? As if they be waste. Garments a size too small to be worn. Hanabi's mind, which had carefully kept images of and conversations with this woman, began to discard. To toss aside all which would hurt her.

For what memories can be real be they imagined? Hanabi lost her mother, and so she lost herself, discarding these collections of the first love she'd ever known as if they were shoes that wouldn't fit.

And yet longed for them when she found her feet bare and cold without that lasting warmth. But you couldn't have it both ways, not the hurt and the pain, not the illusion of comfort from total absence of knowing. From remembering. Hanabi forgot, because it was better than not doing so.

She does not love her family in any kind of open way, but rather with a quiet yearning that adorns her heart like cloth, speechless in it's audacity.

A bare memory of a voice lingers about Hanabi's thoughts. Haunting her.

Haunting her world.

_"You look just like her, Hanabi."_

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**GHOST**  
_a faint duplicate image _

* * *

_Mother Arc: 16, 17, 18, 2, 7, 19._


	17. Lacuna

_"The remembrance of a beloved mother becomes a shadow  
to all our actions; it precedes or follows them."_

* * *

She gathered the pieces to her, one at a time, bit by bit and slowly put herself together. Her mother was long gone, there wasn't even a name left for Hanabi to put her fragmented memories to. _Okaasan?_ _Mother? _What was a word that didn't exist? Lingering images of hair that swept her hands, growing split ends. A sensation that she once felt skin the same shade as hers, tougher than hers. But were these real?

Hanabi was left without her mother. Left without this guiding light in her life to steer her, to right, to wrong, to what she should do. Left her sitting on the stairs to the front entrance, holding her skinned knee. Left her sleeping beneath the sheets in her bed, getting colder as the night went on. Listening to what was unnatural silence and feeling so alone. Who would replace her mother? Who ever could? No one else would be the same.

Hinata's quiet demeanor, sitting at the end of the table and sinking lower into herself without ever hunching her shoulders. This Hanabi gathered in parcels and kept at her heart. Neji's silent contempt for her, for him, his life, and all the world in general, this too she caught and wove into her being.

Her uncle's way of saying nothing and saying everything all at once, which she barely even recalls, but still has all the less. Of his telling everything with just one look, she put together from little fragments to make her soul. Her own private web of a heart.

Her mother was supposed to make her.

She has had to make herself.

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**LACUNA**  
_a space where something has been omitted or has come out_

* * *

_Mother Arc: 16, 17, 18, 2, 7, 19._


	18. Forget

Hanabi sweeps through her hair with a brush made of wood, the long black strands falling like fabric over her shoulders. Her head tilts sideways and she watchs the outside of her window with closed eyes, having no response across her face to the whisper of wind walking inside.

Her eyes still sting in a way that she can't describe when she sees a woman that looks in that happy way at a child. (For who can mistake a mother's face?)

Her always jaw tightens when walking through town as she witnesses more and more reminders of what she is without, until her teeth are set firmly upon the other in a way that lets nothing slip through.

Growing up, she let time slip between her and her memories, lessening the pain as Hanabi freed the connection she shared with her mother. Running from them in the same way an animal outruns death.

The harder she tries, the more she forgets. She knows, by only cold facts of knowing, that her mother's hair was long and dark and her eyes wide like the moon.

But Hanabi soon finds that she could no longer remember the feel of her mother's hand in her own small palm, or the texture of the smooth skin her mother's thumb became which used to fasinate her _so _as a child. The memories become just a distant echo..

Trying to bring them back, makes her cold, inside where things do not heal. It was a cold that lasted.

_You look .. just like her._

Hiashi does not see Hanabi when he looks her in the eyes. This is something Hanabi has known for a long time.

Where did the lines begin that seperated one from another?

She can tell no one this how this one word, _Mother_, hurts her so when it passes from another's lips to her own thin thin ears. Each time, another little piece of her soul breaks. And each time, it feels like the first.

* * *

_(Hanabi, on the other hand, was the very image of their mother, a woman the younger girl had never known. Hinata remembered that beloved face though, and savored the memories of the kind-hearted woman who'd treasured her only daughter.)_

-- Team 8 by S'TarKan

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**FORGET**  
_to fail, to leave behind_

* * *

_Mother Arc: 16, 17, 18, 2, 7, 19._


	19. Heart

Naruto was not known for tact.

It was one full year later, exact even to the hour, and there he was knocking on the front door, gift clutched tightly in hand. He was anything, if, subtle. His fists rang against the wood like screaming choirs in a sanctuary of stillness.

He could feel their eyes on his back, watching, staring.. He knew they were there.

Guards at the main gate, guards on the rooftops. Guards in the gardens, and guards, less discrete, openly looking from inside. Measuring him up as Hanabi herself answered the door, knowing with seeing, what was coming.

And still, she held the box to her, and cried openly. Drowning in salty tears and runny noses..

"Happy Mother's Day."

* * *

_("Thats why your eyes were burning silly. And why you had trouble breathing. Your body wanted to cry."  
"And my chest?" Ryoko asked quietly, seeing the sense her mother was making.  
"Your heart hurt.")_

-- Not I, by Diane Long

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a ry

**HEART**  
_basis of emotional life; considered as the source and center_

* * *

_Mother Arc: 16, 17, 18, 2, 7, 19._


	20. Craving

He remembered those long, horrible days of being too small to reach the food, and too young to know how to make it. His hunger was something he could visualize.

It sat curled in the pit of Naruto's stomach, uncut fangs and teeth far far too white - for what substance can be marred with nothing to mar it?

He was born in October, when things are hidden.

But he never talks about it, you know. What it was like to be so young, and alone and cold in the dark for so very long.

* * *

And Chouji eats until the food has no taste, and becomes as bland as used gum, chewing until the act is but a chore - more habit than need.

For him, and his whole family, this is normal. They eat until they can take no more, when more to their stomach would make it empty itself.

They do this because this is their weapon - their food. Their energy. This is the last resort, what they turn to when all else fails.

* * *

But Naruto longs so hard for some things, that they become etched against his soul. This wanting and yearning desire. He tries not to hate, would give almost anything to keep that greasy fire from winding through him. But he can't help it.

He remembers the wanting. The hiding behind a too-long flap of fabric hanging from a merchant's stall. Watching the rows and rows on display as if, by merely waiting, it would come to him.

As if he could bring life by desire. As if it would move.

The blood was easy to find. It slept in soft burrows and rain gutters and the back alleyways under the garbage bins. He dug and he sought and he found, and he shifted through the useless bones and thrown-out paper, ripping bags apart with his teeth, with his nails, his claws.

They called out to him on the streets. _Monster_. _Demon._ Was he? Was he not?

He was hungry.

He was _always_ hungry.

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

__

**CRAVING**  
_a strong desire, a need_


	21. Maternal

Mothers must be warm, like baths in the afternoon and chocolate after midnight, Naruto thinks.

He is almost sure of this, and has half figured out that a mother is someone who cares enough to stay by the time he gathers the courage to ask Hanabi.


	22. Home

_"I've heard him laugh with you," he said simply. "Tell you he trusts you. That's enough." _  
_- the Secret of Slytherin, by Kirinin_

* * *

Hanabi first meets Iruka, truly meets him face to face, when they are moving her stuff into Naruto's apartment. The man is almost overwhelmingly cheerful and friendly, and Hanabi had to take two steps back just to reorient herself, he that much like Naruto.

She has a small duffle bag full of belongings in her arms, and Iruka is scolding Naruto for not being a gentleman and carrying it for her while trying to move the furniture by himself.

She wants to tell him that she doesn't really need that much space, and there's no reason to move everything about just for her, but Naruto is smiling in a way that makes her sides hurt and dancing around Iruka like a child again.

So she doesn't say a thing, and drops her bag at the foot of Naruto's bed. The apartment is _small_, barely the size of her bedroom, and only one room.

The kitchen is against one wall, and the bed sides to the other, right below the window she loves to sit on and watch the sun rise through.

The only other window is half the size of the first and hidden over the sink beside the fridge. All that's left to the room is a small pocket of open hall which is the bathroom.

Iruka doesn't say anything about her, and Hanabi has to wonder if Naruto even had to ask for his help at all.

Hanabi sits down on the mattress and listens to them argue over where to put a second bed. Iruka wants to move the couch out and bring in a set of twin beds for them, innocently - or kindly - ignoring what could happen with a man and a woman left alone as they would be.

Naruto says that they take turns sleeping on the couch anyways - whoever drags themselves home first gets the luxury of the bed - so there's no reason to go out and buy a whole 'nother one.

Iruka starts yelling, but they're both laughing soon, and then Naruto is in the kitchen pulling open drawers and making sandwhiches. His back is to her, and she is watching it, not really noticing or caring how her eyes linger on the lines in his shoulders.

Iruka offers to help put her stuff away, but she only has the small bag, so she doesn't say anything and crosses her legs as she leans against the window.

The heat filtering through from what is another hot afternoon wraps around her neck like a pair of hands and she rests her head there to stare at the lines of ceiling.

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**HOME**  
_the center or heart of something_  
_where one feels they belong_

* * *

Home Arc: 4, 20.

Chapters 3, 4, 11, 14, and 16 are very different. Please revisit them. The others have mostly unnoticeable changes.


	23. Nourishment

_Peace - that was the other name for home.  
- Kathleen Norris_

* * *

Sometimes when the nights seemed to come too early and the streets grew too long, Naruto would not go home and would sleep instead in Iruka's living room on couch cushions almost as big as he.

And Iruka would pull out blankets and pillows and wrap Naruto up in them until when, in the middle of the night when he had to _gogogo!_ _Go to the bathroom, now!,_ Naruto would pull hmself off the couch with a muffled thud and keep rolling until he had unwrapped himself layer by layer.

Then he would run back to the couch, half-afraid Iruka would have woken up and put the blankets away, and jump back onto the cushions. Pulling blanket after blanket over and onto him until he almost couldn't breathe with all this suffocating warmth (and love) surounding him.

Naruto loved it.

And, in the morning Iruka would pull off this nest of fabric and pleasant smells of coffee (from late nights), ink (from grading papers), and ramen (from appeasement) from the boy and make Naruto breakfast.

Wafting through the kitchen and the house as he cooked. Until for days Naruto could smell the remants of Iruka's home on his clothes.

Sometimes letting Naruto stand on a chair and watch how he fried the dishes and cut the food. Always warning, always careful. Until a time came when Naruto would associate food with warmth, and sleep with satisfaction.

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**NOURISHMENT**  
_what is essential for growth_


	24. Family

_"The entire sum of existence is the magic of being needed by just one person."  
- Vi Putnam_

* * *

Kakashi was cold like winter nights and warm like autumn mornings. He'd let Naruto sleep in on Saturdays and leave slips of paper in Naruto's window, so torn and scrawled that at most times Naruto wasn't sure if it was intentional or not.

And Naruto got angry with child-like indignity at reminds of what he had already been told, yelling at the shadows, locking the windows, and barricading the door. But still, Kakashi came.

Every once in awhile the man would look at Naruto and smile in that weird way he had of not really smiling at all beneath hiding and obscurity. And it almost seemed to say, _good job_, to Naruto. _You're learning well._

So, Naruto gave Kakashi a plant, one tall and full of large, uncurling leaves. But Kakashi didn't understand at all.

He couldn't give out love the way Naruto did. He didn't understand love like that.

* * *

t i t l e - s u m m a r y

**FAMILY**  
_where one belongs_

* * *

_Note: __Alright! _It finally works! You can't imagine how deliriously happy I am now.  
So, to celebrate, one more update! Do the update dance!


End file.
